Loose Balls

[Rick TYler]

Will loose balls be a significant factor in this game? Please share your thoughts.

[Jonathan Norris]

I feel that It will be very important, because you will not have to drive 50+ feet to restock your supply of balls. Human loading will not be as efficient as it may seem, most likely longer than last year (yes they are very different).

[Shu Song]

I must disagree with the above point. Teams will try to make their bots as basket like as possible to catch more balls thrown at it. If the bot is right up against the player station, it's almost a 100% chance to get it in the bot. There will be minimal balls on the ground from teams trying to get it to their bot. Throwing the ball to the vicinity of the robot and having it suck the ball up is much more time consuming than just throwing it <i>in</i> the robot.

So with minimal balls from misthrows to the robot, the only other way a ball can end up on the ground is if a robot misses a shot. I acutally expect a lot of those shots to miss. But the defence will likely be on ball collection mode as well as obstructing other robots. So a whole mechanism to quickly pick up balls from the ground doesn't seem cost:score (that's a ratio) effective.

So I dare say that a few of the better bots will NOT have floor loaders this year.

[Alekat]

I(as human player) plan on spending most of my time scoring points, not loading my robot. They can pick up my missed points and shoot them.

[santosh]

I think it will be vry important. Although you can load by the human player, I think there will be a ton of balls on the floor from missed shots, which I think there will be a lot of. Also when the human players try to load the balls into their bots, I think it may be more difficult thn most people expect.

Originally Posted by Alekat

I(as human player) plan on spending most of my time scoring points, not loading my robot. They can pick up my missed points and shoot them.

Also, if you are the human player and you are trying to score, imagine how hard that would be. first off, you have to get it in a corner goal 50 ft away . 50 feet isnt too bad, but your sight will be obstructed at most times in my opinion. Also there will be tons of bots bloking the goal. Not to mention the cfact that the goals ar elike 10" tall and the ball is 7". Not an amazing amount of tolerance on your shots there

[Lil' Lavery]

Let's take a look at this problem from the very beginning of the match. Each alliance gets 40 balls to dispose of at their will (10+ MUST be at HP station though).
In a perfect world, all 3 robots could hit 3 pointers, and hit every 3 pointer they made (and every HP would get their ball into the robot every time). Therefore, no ball would ever end up on the field.
But this isn't a perfect world, there will be error. And seeing as you should always assume the worst when preparing strategy, we'll pretend that your alliance isnt perfect, but by some fluke you end up against 254, 71, and 233 (or some other "perfect alliance"). You will NOT be hitting 100% of your shots into the center goal, while they will. Therefore, if you cannot pick up your missed shots, a few options (and their results) appear:
a)push them into the "your" corner goal. Because the opposing alliance is hitting 100% of their shots, when their HP re-introduces the ball, it will be scored for 3 points, while the corner goal only gave you 1.
Net Result: -2 points
b)Leave them on the floor. Now we reach the point where we look at the opposing alliance's robot capabilities once again. In a "perfect alliance" all 3 robots would be able to load balls from both the HP and the ground. Therefore the opposing robots would gather the balls and shoot them for 3 points.
(In a non-perfect world, an alliance may lack the capability of loading balls, and would leave them in the exact same predicament as you for point swings per ball and how to distribute it, making this a very viable solution to leave the balls on the field in those matches)
Net Result: -3 points
c)push the balls into "their" corner goal (the one with your HPs). This will score 1 point for the opposing alliance, but give YOUR HP control of the ball, which, in the best case can result in a 3 point score for you (not counting the minimum of 1 point cost to grant the ball to your HP, and the amount of field movement time to get from your HP station to your effective firing range). But, for every shot you miss with that ball before you hit the shot, its a loss of 1 point that is not counter-acted in any way.
Net result: +2 (AT BEST)

Therefore, only one real reaction can give you ANY positive points from leaving balls on the field, and even then, not as much as the 3 point shot scored without missing by the opposing alliance. So, let's pretend that both alliances shoot 100 shots per match. If you miss even one shot, and you react in the fashion that will give you the greatest net gain, your score will be 300, and theirs (because of the 1 point you scored for them) will be 301.

Okay, let's interject a bit of reality to the opposing alliance. They will be missing shots too (or so everyone hopes...), or your defense should hopefully be able to force them to. Now the amount of balls on the field is far greater, and the action of the balls will have a far greater swing on the outcome of the match. For every ball they are allowed to introduce straight to the robot, they save the mandatory point cost of having their HP aquire the ball, and save the possible time of having to most to a range where the HP can shoot it (depending on the design and capabilities of the HP).

Beyond even all the net gains of each ball that is missed, there is the whole concept of ball "hoarding" when you have the lead.

[Taylor]

In reading the posts on this thread, it seems to me that most people think the only way HPs can get balls is from the corner goals. Keep in mind the center goals will be feeding back to the HPs as well, so as long as your team is scoring, the other side will never be starved.
New and interesting strategy: build up a ton of points at autonomous mode, get the early lead, stock up on balls and play pre-shot-clock-era basketball where you just hold them until the absolute end of the match. If this means scoring for your opponents, as long as you've got the lead, that's OK. Offense wins games, defense wins championships. Yeah, your RP will be hurt because by design the games would be low-scoring, but if you've got all Ws, who cares?
One more thought: you don't have to have a ball in your hopper (or magazine or whatever) to have control of it - it could be in your alliance station, or you could simply corral the balls in a corner, have 1 or 2 bots in that corner making a fence and defending the balls from the opposition.
So for this strategy, loose ball manipulation would be critical.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by boiler

New and interesting strategy: build up a ton of points at autonomous mode, get the early lead, stock up on balls and play pre-shot-clock-era basketball where you just hold them until the absolute end of the match.

We war-gamed this strategy, and it works well, especially if you have a mixed team with a good shooter and a good defense bot. We hypothesized a robot with an amazing ball sucker, a big hopper, and a powerful 2-speed drive train following the suck-and-dump-once-at-the-end strategy. It worked really well, especially if the sucker could transfer balls to the shooter (a ball ejector on the top that could drop balls into a top-mounted hopper on the shooter). Regardless of the quality of the strategy, our students thought that this 'bot would be boring to build and went with a shooting strategy instead. I know of at least one old 3-digit team that is building a bot like this, and is even giving up ramp-climbing to focus on ball-hoarding.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by boiler

In reading the posts on this thread, it seems to me that most people think the only way HPs can get balls is from the corner goals. Keep in mind the center goals will be feeding back to the HPs as well, so as long as your team is scoring, the other side will never be starved.
New and interesting strategy: build up a ton of points at autonomous mode, get the early lead, stock up on balls and play pre-shot-clock-era basketball where you just hold them until the absolute end of the match. If this means scoring for your opponents, as long as you've got the lead, that's OK. Offense wins games, defense wins championships. Yeah, your RP will be hurt because by design the games would be low-scoring, but if you've got all Ws, who cares?
One more thought: you don't have to have a ball in your hopper (or magazine or whatever) to have control of it - it could be in your alliance station, or you could simply corral the balls in a corner, have 1 or 2 bots in that corner making a fence and defending the balls from the opposition.
So for this strategy, loose ball manipulation would be critical.

That would be an amazing strategy if you were ahead by 26+ points, but otherwise, or your opponents lack the ability to get 3 robots onto the platform. Additionally, you could go for the ramp, which would force the opponent to score very rapidly to make up for the difference, but in many situations they may be able to do so, or at minimum prevent you from getting ramp points (or in a worse case, pin your robots on their ramp).
Because the platforms can potentially be worth 50 points (25 for them, 25 for you), any strategy forsaking the platform can be very risky.
Additionally, because of the fact that any balls score re-circulate back into play, a large lead in this game will be hard to accomplish. I predict that almost every "blow-out" will involve the winning team having more "platform points" than the loser. This is also magnified by the fact that "ball hoarding" is a viable (if yet risky during the final period) strategy. And because of that the 2/3 periods may become very very defensive. (They may also be incredibly offensive depending on robot capabilities and how the back-bot acts-and how the other alliance reacts to the backbot).

This game has more potential for different styles of play than any I have ever seen, and it will be hard to see which strategies work and which don't until you see what the robots' capabilities are.

[insub2]

Originally Posted by Alekat

I(as human player) plan on spending most of my time scoring points, not loading my robot. They can pick up my missed points and shoot them.

while throwing the 7 inch diameter ball, the human player has to stand 4 feet behind a 6 foot wall then it is another 54 feet to a corner gaol that is only 10 inches by 48 inches. a shot i would think to be extremely dificult. and santosh raises another point, ROBOTS! they'll be in your way. so, to sum up, i don't think human players will be scorring many (if any) pionts.

[Jon K.]

Originally Posted by Shu Song

I must disagree with the above point. Teams will try to make their bots as basket like as possible to catch more balls thrown at it. If the bot is right up against the player station, it's almost a 100% chance to get it in the bot. There will be minimal balls on the ground from teams trying to get it to their bot. Throwing the ball to the vicinity of the robot and having it suck the ball up is much more time consuming than just throwing it <i>in</i> the robot.

Might I just note however, that isn't quite as true as you may think. Upon a close inspection of the rules it states in rule

<G33> HUMAN PLAYER Shooting Zone - The HUMAN PLAYER must remain behind the STARTING LINE
and within the ALLIANCE ZONE when they are entering a ball onto the field. Each violation will result
in a 5-point penalty.

so you start out at least 4 feet away from the back of the Polycarb and players station. Thusly making it a very difficult shot to just lob into a bot next to the players station. This will definitely require a lot of work and practice to achieve.

[Kelvin Ng]

Hmm, although I agree with Shu about there not being many ball missing while loading from the corner goals, there may be a problem with tossing the balls to the backbot.

supposing one of the offensive robots successfully unloads all its balls into the corner goal. The human players may decide to toss these balls to their backbot. However, the robot that has just unloaded has several options:

a) play offense and gaurd their shooter so they may score without interference
b) play defense on the backbot and prevent it from loading balls.

if the backbot is left alone (I'm assuming this won't happen for very long, or very often), it may be possible for human players to toss balls in attempts to load their backbots. However much training they receive and how accurate their shots become, loading the backbot by throwing balls in its general idea will become exceedingly difficult if it is gaurded. If the backbot is gaurded, there may be alot of missed balls after all. A way to get around this would be:

a) have a ball collection device
or
b) load a defending robot, then have it swap spots with the backbot.

[dhitchco]

How important will it be to design a bot to pick-up loose balls? Ask yourself, how many loose balls will there be in a match? Loose balls come from the following:

1) They fall out of robots that have been pre-stored with (up to) 10 balls at the beginning of the match. This is not a likely source of loose balls even if a robot gets jostled.

2) They fall onto the field from failed shots at the upper 3-point goal. This is likely to be the biggest source of loose balls to be gobbled up

3) The fall onto the field in the process of your bot trying to push/dump them into the side goals. This also is a high-probability source for loose balls

4) The fall onto the field after being put into play by the three human players (either missing a side-goal shot or missing their own 'bot refill). Also a pretty high probability of happening.

5) They are put onto the field by the field judges after they have bounced/flown out of the field. This could be caused by any number of random events. My best guess is that at least 10 balls per match will get re-introduced to the field of play by the judges....

So, overall, I'll guess that any design which does NOT take into account the need to pick-up loose balls on the field will always have to make a LONG trip home to be refilled and/or will simply be missing out on the need to bve a "hunter/gatherer".....

[Kevin Sevcik]

The way I see it is that if your entire alliance depends on balls from the human players, then you've pretty much resigned yourself to playing catch up. Every ball you have in your player station is a point the other team has scored on you, after all. If the other alliance exclusively shoots three pointers, then the best you can do is match their points. Hrm. I should make a note of this if we're against an alliance than can't scoop. Should just concentrate on hitting every 3 we fire and starving them....

[Stu Bloom]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

The way I see it is that if your entire alliance depends on balls from the human players, then you've pretty much resigned yourself to playing catch up. Every ball you have in your player station is a point the other team has scored on you, after all. If the other alliance exclusively shoots three pointers, then the best you can do is match their points. Hrm. I should make a note of this if we're against an alliance than can't scoop. Should just concentrate on hitting every 3 we fire and starving them....

Well good luck with that strategy ...

We're thinking with the defensive interaction allowed this year and all the other factors feeding into a consistent aiming and firing mechanism it won't be a simple task to routinely make those 3 pointers ...